


The bottom draw

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, and implied but not mentioned self harm, follows headcanons ive laid out in other fics, tw for neglectful parenting here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 05:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21440788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Paul is tasked by Emma to pick up something she needs from her parent’s house, and with adequate time to explore he pieces together the childhood she’s so quiet about
Relationships: Paul Matthews/ Emma Perkins
Comments: 1
Kudos: 59





	The bottom draw

**Author's Note:**

> Just be careful because there’s some implications of self harm so just take care if that’s something that might unsettle you ! Otherwise, this follows other head canons I’ve laid out in other fics, primarily family dinner and a father, a daughter a family with some lesser references towards it depends

“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck,” Emma dropped her pile of papers back onto the table. 

“I’m sure it’s in there somewhere Em. I don’t think you would’ve thrown out banking information,” Paul tidied the papers back up, slipping them back into their files. “Maybe it’s at Hidgens’ place?” He suggested hopefully. 

“It isn’t! I rang him up earlier and he said he doesn’t have it! And you know how organised he is!” Her shoulders fell and she whined. “He has my files in alphabetical order. And he has copies of everything. I mean, I thought maybe I did leave it at his house! We don’t have enough space here so he has everything! Like, my passport is at his house. He keeps all my papers!”

“Em, breathe!” Paul took in an exaggerated breath, encouraging her to do the same. “You’re freaking out. Just calm down. If you can’t find your number you can just call the bank and they’ll renew your card for you,” he pointed out, but it did nothing to soothe her worries. 

“I know that much! It’s just that if those papers aren’t here and they aren’t at Hidgens’, they’re at my parent’s house,” she bit down on her nails as she inhaled a shaky breath. 

“Oh!” Now Paul was panicked too. “You really think?” 

“Well it’s like you said, no one throws out banking information! Ugh, Paul! I left that house in such a hurry and I don’t ever go back there if I can help it. But it’s totally there, I actually think I remember putting it in my desk draw because I got my new card when I was preparing to move out with Hidgens.” 

“What did you have before hand?” 

“I was overseas! I had quetzales, Paul! No American money so I had no American card!” She clapped her hands together. “And now I’ve stumbled onto the great conclusion that all my banking details are at my dad’s place. He’s probably set them on fire to spite me by now!” She balled up her fists and turned to ravage through her paper collection again just in case she had missed it.

“Hey, he’s an asshole but he’s not that bad.” 

“But now I have to tell Hidgens that I have important papers at my dad’s place and he’ll say ‘don’t worry! I’ll go get them!’ And he’ll go over and collect them for me but he’ll pick a fight with my dad and then my dad will text me to say ‘wow what a great decision you made with that man!’” She imitated herself texting with her hands. “And then I won’t be able to focus on anything all week!” She yanked out the desk chair from where it was pushed in to sit down and rest her head in her hands. 

“Oh Emma, don’t panic!” Paul knelt by her side, laying his hands over her shoulder and cooing to her. “Hey, you know what?” 

“What?” She looked through her hands. 

“How about I go over? I’ll pick up your papers for you and I won’t start any fights with your parents - in fact, I think your mum really liked me that one time we met!” 

Emma’s eyes grew hopeful and she raised her head from her hands. “Really?” 

“Uh, yeah! Why not?” Her smile brought him the confidence. “I’ll head over and bring them home before dinner so you don’t have to worry about it. Does that sound okay? You said they were in your desk drawer right?” 

Emma nodded up and down as frantically as she could. “Thank you babe, oh my god. Oh my god, thank you so much!” She threw her arms around him and stretched up to kiss him. 

Paul blushed, she made him feel like a hero. Her hero. “You send your parents a text and I’ll go over there right now! You don’t have to worry at all!” Maybe he was getting a bit cocky now, but Emma’s smile kept growing wider. 

“You’ll really do it? Just don’t look too hard, early 2000’s Emma was a bit embarrassing.” 

“Hey, if you think that’s the case you should see 2000’s Paul! I had a framed photo of Natalie Portman on my wall,” he snickered. “I’ll go get your papers, okay babe?”

She gave his cheek another quick kiss. “Thank you Paul. You don’t know how much that means to me.”

———————————————————

“So she sends the delivery boy, huh?”  
Her dad grunted when he showed up at their doorstep. 

“Darling! Don’t harass him for her actions,” her mother swooped to the door to push her father away. “Paul, it’s lovely to see at least you, come inside!” She held open the door and he crossed the threshold inside.

He could feel the atmosphere change instantly. This was a house that hadn’t seen many happy days.   
Even with the lights on it was still dark somehow. 

“Can I get you tea or coffee? You should stay and talk!”

Paul dipped his head graciously but denied her offer. “Oh, don’t bother yourself with that. I’ll just be in and out, I don’t want to get under your skin!” 

“She really can’t show up here herself can she?” Her dad grunted from somewhere in the kitchen. “Gotta send the boyfriend.” 

“Shh!” Her mother hissed at him. “He’s a guest!” 

“I’m sorry to intrude with such short notice,” he gave an awkward half-bow.

“No, no! You should come over more often! Maybe you should bring Emma with you too next time!”

Paul wasn’t going to make any promises. Emma avoided these two for a reason. So instead, he laughed like she had told a joke before excusing himself. “I’ll just head to her room.”

Her mother didn’t seem to follow the societal rules of conversation. She never looked away to signal the end of the conversation, but stayed looking at him as he walked off down the hallway. 

He had only been to her old house once, but it was easy to tell which room belonged to Emma. 

The other doors in the hallway were plain and normal, but there were cracks and dents in her door like someone had punched it. And if that wasn’t a good enough indicator, the lock on the outside of her door was.

He hesitantly opened the door, surprised with the state of her room. It was like stepping back in time.

“Aww, wow!” He lifted up a framed photo off her side table. A cast photo of her and her acting class from when she was much younger. He recognised her trademark smile, still the same after all these years. 

Hatchetfield was a small town, and he recognised other faces in the photo too. 

The gang was all crowded up in front of the school stage in matching cast shirts.   
Emma’s hands were entwined with two other girls and a boy rested his arm on her shoulder playfully. 

With a smile, he set it back down. There was a pile of printed out photos on her nightstand as well, like she had intended to bring them with her when she left. 

He skimmed through them - photos of childhood pets and family outings, more cast photos and a dozen photos of someone he assumed to be Jane. 

She had a similar face to Emma but her skin was covered in freckles and she wore glasses. Paul just loved how happy Emma looked standing next to her. 

He liked Emma’s room. It was nostalgic despite the fact he had never been here up until this year.  
It was a combination of iconic 2010 products, like the glow in the dark stars stuck to the roof above her bed, and the untouched by time vibe he was hit with as he entered. 

He wanted to stay and explore it, learn more about Emma’s life before they met, but she was probably at home on the edge of her seat and he couldn’t keep her waiting. 

There were quite a few draws in her room so he opened her nightstand draw just to double check. It was mostly empty besides a few bloody tissues and a few basic first aid supplies: some pain killer medication and bandaids.

She had a shitty, old computer at her desk with the fat tower jammed underneath. It still looked like it still ran on windows vista.   
It had tacky, half-torn off stickers spotted around the monitor. 

He jabbed his fingers at the keys to hear the loud clicking noise. He met himself play with the keyboard as he looked at the photos blue-tacked to the wall behind the computer. 

One was a print out of a world map but others were photos of lesser known areas of Hatchetfield. He knew were they all were of course.   
The cove on the north side of the island, the other side of the Hatchetfield forest, and a hiking trail on the tallest hill on the island. 

It was cute. She was an explorer even then. 

He knelt down to start his search through her draws, not quite sure if she had given him a specific one. 

He rolled open the bottom draw. Inside was a small, open box half-filled with snacks. It was chocolate and hard candy mostly. 

“Awww, I didn’t know she had a sweet tooth,” he grinned. But he had a nagging suspicion that it wasn’t quite the case. 

It was the cheap sort of stuff that didn’t expire or need any sort of proper refrigeration. It was non perishable, like she was some sort of doomsday prepper, and it would’ve been a little bit too early to pick up that trait from Hidgens. 

Unsettled, he closed that draw.  
The second draw he opened was a junk draw more than anything. It had old sketchbooks and colourful embroidery threads and empty perfume bottles. There were a few scrap sheets of paper but they looked like old assignments. 

‘Label the organelles of a plant cell’ one sheet asked. Another, much older sheet was a feedback sheet for a drama class.   
It was pristine and untouched like it was precious to her.   
An A- and a smiley face in red pen were sketched at the top of the page.  
He skimmed through a few more and came across old report cards. 

“Oofh,” he grunted. 

Growing up himself he lost sleep over his grades staying up late to write high school essays. He fretted at the idea of not having homework to hand in.   
He couldn’t ever imagine growing up with a soulmate that couldn’t organise themself or care for their grades.  
Young Paul would be in for a surprise. 

No wonder Emma had hidden them. They weren’t scores her parents would be happy with compared to Jane’s straight A’s. 

He tucked them back under the pile of papers for Emma’s sake, not that they mattered now.

He covered the stack of papers back up with the empty bottles and the colourful embroidery thread so it looked like it wasn’t touched. 

A narrative of Emma’s earlier years was piecing itself together in Paul’s head and it sent chills down his spine. 

He found the banking paper in the third draw with a sigh of relief. He folded it up to slip it into his pocket and shot Emma a quick text that he had found it. 

He let out a quiet laugh. Underneath were a set of pink, pearl envelopes all of which had her name on them.

Paul couldn’t hear her parents out in the hallway so he figured he had time to inspect them. 

“Cute,” he chuckled as he skimmed through the letters inside.   
The handwriting belonged to that of a younger boy. There were half a dozen love letters proposed to her from this boy.   
They were dated all the way back to 2006.   
They were cute if not a little pestering. Always asking for a reply to his letters that he never seemed to get. 

Young Emma would’ve been living a few different lives all up.

She looked to enjoy her sister’s company and adore her acting. She was a perfectly happy young girl when she was around the right people. 

But other things painted a different image. The photos behind her computer were taken in the furthest points of Hatchetfield. Part of him pointed out that it wasn’t as much exploring as escaping.   
The snack draw was another frightening idea, suggesting a child that couldn’t rely on her family to feed her. 

The unanswered, clingy love letters she had chosen to keep and the way her mother behaved showed how little she learnt about social interaction. 

She just wasn’t in a good place growing up, but that had changed now he hoped. 

It was no wonder Emma didn’t want to come here herself. 

A small journal was the last thing in her now empty draws and he didn’t know whether or not he wanted to open it. 

He considered the hefty ‘keep out or else!!!’ message scrawled onto the front page in a thick, black pencil, and he would’ve respected it if he wasn’t knee deep in reconstructing Emma’s childhood. 

He was familiar with her handwriting from all the Biology papers she always had scattered over the coffee table and this wasn’t quite it. He couldn’t read it. It was messy and scrawled like it was written in the heat of the moment. This looked more like the time Emma was trying to finish a paper on her break at Beanies before her class. 

He couldn’t read much of it. Occasionally there were lists and numbers and angry scribbles but it was mostly chicken scratch writing. 

One page, dated back to some time in 2009 was clear enough to make out whole lines. 

‘Mum took Jane out to an award ceremony today and so only dad and me are home’ 

“Dad and I,” he corrected as he read. 

‘At first it was cool because dad said I could choose what to eat but then of course I got in trouble for not getting grades like Jane. I showed him the report my acting teacher gave me and he said it didn’t count, and then he fell asleep on the couch. It’s really starting to suck when he does that because then what am I supposed to eat? I would pack my own lunches if he would actually go and buy the food. And I would probably eat more too if they didn’t argue at dinner every night. I’m so sick of it. I can’t wait to leave Hatchetfield in a couple of years. I nearly have enough money now!’ 

He snapped the cover shut. He didn’t want to know what else he would find. 

He shoved everything back into the draw and flinched back when something cut into his finger. His hand flew back to his chest like it had been bitten.   
He examined the cut before putting it to his lips with a whine. 

“What was that?” He emptied everything out onto her desk to look into the back of the draw. 

Forced into the backboard of the draw was something sharp and silver. He felt a sick feeling growing in his stomach and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fish it out or not. 

But it was a morbid curiosity. Carefully, he yanked it out to see with dread it was exactly what he feared it to be. 

He held it in his fingers, not having a single clue what to do with it. 

“Getting the real teenage Emma Perkins experience, huh?” 

He dropped it back into the draw, slamming it shut and whipping around to see Emma leaning against the doorway watching him quite intently.

“Emma!” He gasped. “What’re you doing here?” 

“I figured it wasn’t very fair of me to send you to the lion’s den.” One hand flicked the heavy lock on her door open and shut without rhythm. She strolled into her room, breathing in the air and taking everything in slowly.

“How’d you get here?”

“I just walked in through the front door,” she pointed over her shoulder. “They’re off arguing in the laundry so you can’t hear them. They have a problem with closing doors, always have. They let my dog run away when I was 12, the assholes,” she chuckled harshly. 

Paul fumbled for a response, not even able to form words. 

“You still into me after seeing all this embarrassing stuff?” She snorted as she picked up her theatre photo off her bedside table. “Wow, little kid me had some problems,” she put the photo face down on the table. “Why’d no one tell me that was an unacceptable haircut?” 

“Em, babe, you’re uh...” He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “You’re uh...!”

“I’m here, yeah! Did you find the paper? Wow, you’ve been turning things upside down!” She stepped over the piles of paper on the floor to sit down on her table. 

Paul stood up, shaking his head. “I just wasn’t sure what drawer it was in!” 

He noticed her face harden when she saw the contents of her draw laid out on the table but it eased up again as she looked at him. “That’s all good. It only matters that you found the important stuff, right?”  
She pushed the journal and the letters off the table into the empty waste bin underneath without a word. 

“Yeah! Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” He made a beeline for her bedroom door but she stayed seated the table, examining old trinkets. 

He peered out the door to locate her parents, who had slowly made their way back to the living room, remnants of an argument still lingering in their expressions. When he looked back he managed to catch a glimpse of Emma taking that final thing inside the top draw and dropping it into the waste bin along side her other bad memories.

He breathed a sigh of relief and met her halfway across the room, grabbing both her wrists in his hands.

“Woah,” Emma gave him a wild look, dipping in to kiss him quickly. “What’re you doing, bud?” 

“I’m just glad we have those papers. But how’re we going to get back out now? Your parents are back.” His thumbs traced circles on her wrists, checking for any sort of bumps or scars. 

“Ah, easy.” She rolled her eyes. “You can take the door, I’ll go through the window.” 

“You used to do that a lot?” 

She looked at him incredulously. “Babe. If there’s an olympics for escape routes sign me up,” she joked. 

“That’s a little concerning.”

“It’s a joke, man. Survival of the fittest.” 

“Hey Em?” He stuck out a foot to close the door behind him without letting her go. “I know you sent me here to get your papers and everything so I know I shouldn’t have been looking but I just saw some stuff that worried me and I wanna know if you’re okay?”

Emma made a strange face for a second, pulling her wrists back from his hands. “Is this because you saw the photo of my 2003 haircut?” She tucked her hands deep into her jacket pockets. 

“I mean, you don’t talk about your childhood much.”

“Why would I? I actively try to forget it,” she snorted like this was still some sort of joke. 

“I just didn’t know how bad things really were, I saw-“ 

Emma’s hands instinctively clapped to her ears, her eyes wide like she had just been slapped in the face. 

He decided to let it slide. She didn’t want to talk about it and he wasn’t doing her a favour by trying to address it. “What I’m saying is that you’re exactly right. I’d burn that photo if I were you. Even 2003 me had a better haircut than that.” He tried to play along with her, elbowing her in the side. But after his laugh died off he gave her a sympathetic look and a small nod to assure her he wasn’t going to chase her up in it.

“Thanks, I’ll consider that advice.” She tucked her hands back down in her pockets. She took in a deep breath with a quick glance back at her desk before turning back to Paul with a small smile.  
“Now, you wanna see me launch myself out this window or not?” She widened her stance to prepare herself. 

He was solaced for now. “Is that safe? Do you need a hand?” 

“Nah, watch.” She opened up her window, it screeched as it rolled up on its old tracks. She rubbed her hands together. “Meet you outside, can’t wait to get out of this place.”

She took a step back to get a run up before hoisting herself through the open space and vaulting through cleanly. 

He nodded, impressed at her total lack of hesitation. She loved to show off like that.  
He patted his pants pocket so he knew he still had the paper and took the more boring yet menacing hallway to the living room. 

“Oh! Did you find it alright?” Emma’s mother hurried over to stop him before he could leave. 

“Yep! It’s all here. I’ve got to go now. Emma’s waiting for me at home,” he lied. 

“Next time Emma sends you on a little errand you should make her come with you. It’s the least she could do.” Her father grunted from where he seemed to live on the couch. 

“You should!” Her mother nodded. “She never contacts us, we’ve seen you more than we’ve seen her this year.” 

“I don’t think I’ll be coming back over,” he tried to sound polite but he was mad deep down. “And I don’t think I’ll be bringing Emma by any time soon,” he had to admit. It was scary to say it to their faces and watching their reactions in real time. He didn’t even hide the shiver in his voice. “I don’t think she wants to see you. A-and I don’t want her to see you either.”   
He nodded with his whole upper torso, dipping his head right down to hide the redness of his cheeks. 

He closed the front door on the both of their surprised expressions and made a bolt towards his car. 

“Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.” Emma hopped into the passenger seat, pulling a leaf out of her hair. “I had a clean landing in case you were wondering,” she gave him a daring smile.

He tried to return it, but he just shook his head. He felt bad and worried and guilty. He could barely focus on the road and he knew how much that bothered her.   
But it was on him. He was the one who searched her things and read her journal. He invaded her privacy and he should suffer the consequences. 

“Hey,” Emma spoke to him, her hand bumping his. “Why the face, man?” 

“I just really love you, Em. And it hurts my heart to think about that house and everything that happened in it,” he had to tell her. He couldn’t get that stupid image out of his mind of everything he found in the last draw.   
He couldn’t imagine the way she must’ve felt. The worst he experienced in his family growing up was an annoying cousin he didn’t like, but as an adult he moved past that. But he could tell Emma was still hung up on her fear and hatred of that place. He trailed off, Emma probably didn’t want to hear any of his worries. 

“I’m doing great, Paul.” Her voice broke the silence and she turned to him with an understanding smile. 

“Really?” Those were the words he wanted to hear.

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?” She brushed her fingers lightly across his forearm before returning her hands to her lap. “I’m out of that place, I got myself a new, cool dad and I’ve got a pretty dope boyfriend too.” She gave him a playful punch to the shoulder so he would laugh again.   
She sank back into her seat and he observed her from the corner of his eye, cherishing the way she relaxed around him and the way she smiled as she looked over at him.   
“I’m doing better now.”


End file.
